This is a repository copy of The effects of e-ridehailing on motorcycle ownership in an emerging-country megacity. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/161921/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Wadud, Z orcid.org/0000-0003-2692-8299 (2020) The effects of e-ridehailing on motorcycle ownership in an emerging-country megacity. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 137. pp. 301-312. ISSN 0965-8564 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2020.05.002 © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/4.0/). Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can’t change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Bike e-hailing impact Zia Wadud forthcoming in TR-A The effects of e-ridehailing on motorcycle ownership in an emerging-country megacity Zia Wadud Abstract The impact of app-based e-hailing or ridesourcing services on various transport metrics is an area of active research, and research so far have focused on the car-based (or four-wheeled vehicle based) services only. In many cities in the developing and emerging countries, motorcycle-based passenger e-hailing services have become very popular in the last few years, but the implications of these have not been studied before. This study investigates the effects of motorcycle-hailing apps in Dhaka – a megacity in Bangladesh – on the size of its motorcycle fleet. We employ segmented multiple regression on timeseries data to show that there was a statistically significant increase in motorcycle ownership in Dhaka as a result of the motorcycle-hailing services. The findings were also supported by a visual intervention analysis. By the end of 2018, there were 7.45% more motorcycles in Dhaka than there would have been if these app-based e-hailing services were not available. We conclude with potential implications of these increases in motorcycle numbers and future research directions. Keywords Ridesharing; ridehailing; segmented regression; Uber; impact; motorcycle; ownership 1 Bike e-hailing impact Zia Wadud forthcoming in TR-A The effects of e-ridehailing on motorcycle ownership in an emerging-country megacity Introduction E-hailing or ridesourcing1 services have been a major innovation in the transport sector in the past decade and have rapidly disrupted how we travel – especially in urban areas. The providers of these services, often known as Transport Network Companies (TNCs), use an online, information technology enabled, and smart phone based platform to connect available car or taxi drivers and potential passengers in real time resulting in an efficient, convenient, quick and transparent procurement of the passenger ride service (Shaheen et al. 2015). Made popular in a very short time by the global and regional TNCs such as Uber, Lyft, Bolt, Ola, Didi-Chuxing, Grab or Careem, the services are now available in nearly every major city in the world, except where they do not comply with city regulations. Understanding the effects of e-hailing services on various traffic or travel outcome is an active area of research, and, so far the evidence on different outcome have been mixed. While there are suggestions that e-hailing services could shift trips from private cars to transits through better first and last mile connections and reduce congestion (Li et al. 2017), others argue that these services may have increased traffic on the road and increased congestion, especially through empty-running and modal shift to these services (Henao and Marshall 2019, Erhardt et al. 2019). Henao et al. (2018) and Wadud (2019) show that the demand for parking at airports has decreased significantly at airports since the introduction of the TNC services. Ownership of vehicles is another important metric used for measuring the impacts. Vehicle numbers can act as a proxy for vehicle miles travelled and congestion, but can also be an independent metric, especially since it is often argued that the e-hailing services will reduce ownership of vehicles. Although questionnaire-based work reports a modest ‘intention’ by the users of these services to give up their cars or delay car purchases (Rayle et al. 2016), few studies investigate the effects of e- hailing services on private vehicle ownership using actual vehicle registration data. In this regard, Ward et al. (2019) found that the ownership of private vehicles has reduced since the introduction of these services in the US, while Schaller (2019) suggest the opposite in the largest cities in the US. Ongoing work shows that the number of private hire vehicles (PHVs) in the UK may have increased 1 The terms e-hailing, ridehailing, ridesourcing, ridesharing are all used to mean the same thing in some parts of the world, and different things in other parts, creating some confusion. We use SAE International’s (2018) definition here. 2 Bike e-hailing impact Zia Wadud forthcoming in TR-A since the entry of Uber in this market, but the effect on the number of private vehicles is still unknown (Wadud 2019).2 So far, research on the impacts of TNC services has been limited to services whereby a four-wheel based vehicle is used to transport the passenger and to countries from the developed world. In the last few years, two-wheeled motorcycle-based e-hailing services have become popular in many developing and emerging economies – especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. These services are not only available in places where traditional motorcycle taxis were already in use as a paratransit mode, but also where motorcycles were never used before to provide commercial mobility services.3 Around the same time, there has been a growth in app-based motorcycle courier and food delivery services in many of these countries. However, little is known about the transport related impacts of these motorcycle e-hailing services. This research aims to fill this gap by estimating the effects of motorcycle ridesourcing on the number of motorcycles in a megacity in an emerging economy: Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The number of motorcycles is a useful metric not only for understanding potential travel and congestion impacts, but is also important from a safety perspective, since motorcyclists are substantially more vulnerable compared to other motorized transport users (DfT 2015). Motorcycle taxis and smart-phone apps Motorcycle taxis are a popular form of low-cost paratransit in many South-East Asian and Sub- Saharan African countries. Examples include 'win motor-sai's in Bangkok, Thailand, 'ojek's in Jakarta, Indonesia, 'okada's in Lagos, Nigeria, 'boda-boda's in Kampala, Uganda and Dar-Es-Salam, Tanzania, or 'moto's in Phnom Penh, Vietnam and Kigali, Rwanda. In Sub-Saharan Africa, motorcycles and motorcycle taxis could form up to 75% of the traffic in low volume rural roads (Transaid 2017). For trips involving only one passenger, motorcycle taxis are convenient and can be cheaper than using regular taxis or other forms of paratransits for short distances or owning private vehicles (Ehebrecht et al. 2019). In megacities such as Bangkok, Jakarta and Lagos, where traffic congestion is a serious problem, motorcycle taxis are especially popular due to their ability to weave through the stagnant traffic and in small alleys, making them significantly quicker than other road-based vehicles (Kamuhanda and Schmidt 2009). Olvera et al. (2016) report that as many as 104 cities in Sub- 2 In the UK, ridesourcing vehicles are registered as private hire vehicles, which have long existed as an advance- booking-only service. 3 We note that the term paratransit can sometimes be used in the US for transport services for people with disabilities, but here we use it in its original definition as per Kirby et al. (1974): “… those forms of intra-urban passenger transportation which are available to the public, are distinct from conventional transit (scheduled bus and rail) …”, often provided by the informal sector (Cervero 2000). 3 Bike e-hailing impact Zia Wadud forthcoming in TR-A Saharan Africa (out of a sample of 203 cities with a population larger than 100,000) had motorcycle taxis in operation. Motorcycle taxis have traditionally flourished in an organic way - by offering a flexible, accessible and door to door service in the absence of organized, reliable transport services (Phun et al. 2019). Like other informal transport, they fill an important void in transport service provisions in most areas where they operate (Cervero and Golub 2007). In Bangkok, an estimated 200,000 motorcycle taxis served around 4 to 6 million trips every day in 2013 (Sopranzetti 2014), although recent estimates suggest the number of motorcycle taxis are as high as 300,000 (Ratanawaraha and Chalermpong 2015). Similar numbers are quoted for Ugandan capital Kampala (Ssenkaaba 2013), although only half are registered with the authorities. There are an estimated 8 Million Okada drivers in Nigeria (Akwagyriam 2019) and around a million in Kenya (Mingmei 2019), while Tanzania has more than 800,000 motorcycle taxis (Bishop and Amos 2015). Despite the sheer volume of vehicles and operators involved in the business, motorcycle taxis are by and large an informal mode of transport, and – barring a very few exceptions – are often beyond the purview of any regulations on vehicle or driver licensing, operational jurisdiction, insurances, driver training, or fare structure (Cervero 2000).